Disable the Guest User Account at Mac OS X Lion Login Screen

If you’ve installed a modern version of OS X and rebooted or ended up at the lock screen, you may have noticed that a new “Guest User” account appears at the login screen.

This is not a full guest user account, if you select the Guest User option at login, the Mac will restart to a secured Safari-only version of the OS with access to the internet. So what’s the point of this? It turns out this is part of setting up iCloud in Mac OS X, specifically the “Find My Mac” feature. The Safari Guest User allows someone to get online so the Mac can be located, but prevents the Safari user from accessing your files and applications.

We’re going to highly recommend keeping the Guest User Safari account enabled so that if you happen to lose your Mac, or if it’s stolen, it could easily be tracked down. Nonetheless, here’s how to turn this off if you don’t need it for some reason.

How to disable that “Guest User” from appearing at the OS X login screen

For modern versions of OS X, disabling Guest account is done as follows:

Open System Preferences

Go to “Users & Groups” and click the unlock icon

Click on “Guest User”

Uncheck the box for ‘Allow guests to log in to this computer’

That’s it, no more guest account on boot.

Disabling Guest User in OS X Lion, Mountain Lion

On earlier releases of OS X , guest account is a bit different, here’s how to turn that off:

Click on “Security & Privacy”

Click the lock in the lower corner and type in your administrative password to unlock the control panel

Check the box next to “Disable restarting to Safari when screen is locked”

This prevents the Guest User account from being visible at the login screen both during reboot and at the login screen. Again, it’s highly recommended to keep this enabled for security purposes, but if your Mac is locked down with a security cable or you don’t have any use for Find My Mac, you could disable this and not feel too bad about it.

If you haven’t tried it yet, clicking on the Guest User account gives you this message:

This computer will restart to a secure, Safari-only system for the Guest user.

The reboot process is quick and opens directly to Safari, there is no access to anything else. No Finder, no preferences, nothing.

This first started appearing after users installed Mac OS X 10.7.2, but Guest User has stuck around since then in all modern versions of OS X.

82 Comments

I am the owner of this MAC and I and an attack in November 2016 has made a mess of my passwords. The situation now is that my name has been spelled in a lot of ways and I tried Safari, Google and several others, that only made it worse. Of all the name spellings, the correct one ended me up as a guest. I have found at least 5 different spellings that started with the MAC saying that the password or address I tried was already occupied. Try a new one…Now I am 3 persons on FaceBook and more persons on Google and it is impossible to use the right combination. I somehow must delete the wrong spellings and only use one websight I suppose.

I upgraded to Yosemite and now the guest is listed as main administrator. Then when I go to system preferences, groups, and try to unlock to delete guest administrator, a user name and password screen pops up. But it does not accept my user name and password. Is the username and password for Apple the same as administrator username and password?

Hi I’m Jeff and I’d like everyone off my guest user spying on me. Could you teach me to get rid off them. I know I cant stop the government from doing it. Can you teach me to get rid off anyone else though, thanks

After lending my Macbook to a friend who’s house was robbed, it now boots into guest Safari only mode every time. I can boot in Safe Mode to get access to the admin account, but I can’t stop it from booting into guest. I tried the instructions above, but it still booted into guest safari only. Please help!

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand the process in case I lose my Mac. What’s the use of Guest account? Will the thief login and say “Hello, bite me, I’m here!”? What’s the point? This feature is useless for me.

Worked a treat for me. I limit the kids accounts for internet access to 1.5 hours on a school day for homework use so its important they cannot just re-login as guest when their time is up. Yes I know – restricting acids internet access, I’m a monster :)

Thank you. I had NO idea why the Guest login was there, since I had disabled the guest account. This helps a lot! Due to your recommendation, I will go ahead and leave the Safari-only Guest login around. Thanks again!

After install update 10.7.4 I can’t login. Just only grey screen and Guest User . Yesterday I was in apple shop , they couldnt fix this problem. Offer ed me full formatting but all of my installed applications will gone!!!
May be somebody here can help to resolve this problem? Thanks beforehand .
MacBook 2008 December Uninody intel 500gb , 4 gb Ram

[…] User Switching, and the name likely appears in the menu bar due to the Guest Login ability (which can be disabled separately), but if are only looking to remove the name from the menu bar here is […]

This is silly, there is a guest account that is listed under users but it is not treated as user, that is it cannot be deleted. Placing this option onder security and general is just bad design. The first place you go to add/remove users is under users & groups and the only one that cannot be removed is guest…just silly design

Hi, not sure if this is supposed to happen, but I just logged into my guest account to see what was available, and even though it said safari only, I also had access to Mac OS Utilities such as Terminal, Net utility and one other.

[…] do it at your own risk, know how to reverse the change if you ever change your mind, and as the source article (from OS X Daily) advises, it’s better to keep the Guest User account around if there’s a chance your […]

i totally agree! i thought it was stupid to have a guest account when you disabled it in the first place, but now that i know its for security purposes it makes sense. i have mine locked down hard with a cable, it should be really tough to steal mine, but even if they are able to, that account will be useful. thanks for the article.

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